Philadelphia, PA — The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania has announced that Robert S. Kapito, president and director, BlackRock, will be the featured speaker at the School’s MBA commencement in Philadelphia. The May 16, 2010 ceremony will occur at 1 p.m. at Franklin Field, 33rd and South streets.
“We are pleased to have Mr. Kapito, a distinguished Wharton alumnus, as our commencement speaker” said Wharton Dean Thomas S. Robertson, “His tremendous leadership and outstanding professional achievements will undoubtedly prove inspirational to our graduating class.”
Under the leadership of Mr. Kapito and his colleagues, BlackRock, a Fortune 500 company, has grown over the past 21 years from a bond firm of eight partners to the world’s largest, fastest-growing, and best-performing money manager, with over $3 trillion in assets and offices in 24 countries around the world. Following the acquisition of Barclays Global Investors earlier this year, BlackRock now manages twice as much money in assets as its next largest competitor. By industry standards, BlackRock is also an entirely new kind of firm, a financial general store offering products to both institutional and retail investors, and the largest provider of fixed-income funds.
Mr. Kapito earned his BS in economics from Wharton in 1979, and an MBA from Harvard Business School in 1983. As a Trustee of the University of Pennsylvania, he is a founding member of the Debt Subcommittee, and a member of the Investment Board, the Budget and Finance Committee, and the Audit and Compliance Committee. Last fall, he was honored with the Joseph Wharton Award for Leadership, which is given to the Wharton alumnus who embodies the highest standards of leadership in both business and society.
Previous Wharton MBA commencement speakers have included Muhammad Yunus, Connie Duckworth, Lakshmi N. Mittal and Alan Greenspan. Information about the University of Pennsylvania’s 254th Commencement ceremony is available at www.upenn.edu/commencement.
About Robert S. Kapito, President and Director, BlackRock
Robert S. Kapito, president and a director of BlackRock Inc., is chairman of the Operating Committee, a member of the Executive and Leadership Committees, and a member of Corporate Council. He is responsible for day-to-day oversight of BlackRock’s key operating units, including the Account Management and Portfolio Management Groups, Real Estate Group Risk & Quantitative Analysis Group and BlackRock Solutions.
Mr. Kapito currently serves as chairman of the Hope & Heroes Children’s Cancer Fund and as president of the Board of Directors of Periwinkle Theatre for Youth, a national non-profit arts-in-education organization. He earned a BS degree in economics from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania in 1979, and an MBA degree from Harvard Business School in 1983.
About the Wharton School
The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania — founded in 1881 as the first collegiate business school — is recognized globally for intellectual leadership and ongoing innovation across every major discipline of business education. The most comprehensive source of business knowledge in the world, Wharton bridges research and practice through its broad engagement with the global business community. The School has more than 4,900 undergraduate, MBA, executive MBA, and doctoral students; more than 9,000 annual participants in executive education programs; and an alumni network of 85,000 graduates.
For more information: www.wharton.upenn.edu
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